Thursday, August 11, 2005

Ongoing Pool Maintenance

Every other week I take in a water sample, and the pool store tests it and tells me what to do. So far, this has amounted to:

Add one cup of acid, to neutralize the pH.

Shock the pool. No electricity needed ;) just a handy bag of oxidizers. Each bag costs about $3.00. After shocking, it isn't good to swim in the pool for about 12 hours. What I do is shock the pool Thursday evenings, so it is ready for use Friday afternoon.

Chlorine and calcium levels are fine so nothing to add there.

On a weekly basis, I do the following:

Skim the pool once a week, with a skimmer net. You've seen these things: long pole with a net on the end. Basically this is to fish out little bugs and other debris that aren't caught by the automatic skimmer.

Scrub the sides of the pool. This is what the pool robot helps with. I can control the suction of the robot which determines how far up the walls it climbs. Right now the robot doesn't climb up very far, and I will ratchet up the suction just a bit to make it climb more. It is trade off, the more suction the faster it will wear out, but then the less work for me. ;)

So far, pool maintenance has been easy and inexpensive. I hope it stays that way!

My floating thermometer shows the water is a balmy 86 degrees. I wonder how cool it will get during the winter.

Pool RobotHere is Clank! He normally stays on the floor of the pool. The suction hose draws water through the filtration system and also moves his feet. He takes little steps and moves slowly around.

2 comments:

It’s been more than seven years since you posted this, so I would definite LOVE to hear an update from you. Your maintenance procedures are good enough to make your pool last a number of years, provided that you do them religiously. The main issue when it comes to pool maintenance is sticking with it because it can be a cumbersome task in the long run. I hope that you didn’t suffer from that.